


needle and thread

by WonderTwinC



Category: Leverage
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-30
Updated: 2015-04-30
Packaged: 2018-03-26 11:14:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 995
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3848851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WonderTwinC/pseuds/WonderTwinC
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nate knows more than a couple things that he probably shouldn't, but being decent with a needle and thread is one of them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	needle and thread

**Author's Note:**

> I feel like this is something that starts off promising and then devolves pretty rapidly. I had the idea for this but it required much more dialogue than I am accustomed to writing for these two so I feel like it's a bit off, but it is practice.

Sophie did not ask where Nate learned to do stitches.

They were clean and remarkably even, almost like something Eliot would accomplish, except that Nate was moving at a much slower pace than their Hitter usually did when fixing someone up. She watched as he sat in the chair diagonal from hers, his head bent over her arm as he worked in silence.

It was similar to watching him during the execution of a con, his entire focus on the task at hand. She could just hear the methodical tick, tick, tick of his thoughts as he carefully worked the needle through her skin over and over, closing the cut inch by inch.

She couldn’t help herself, she giggled. The needle paused against her skin. Nate glanced up from his work. The slight furrowing of his brow as he studied her was so familiar. Sophie found it charming.

“What’s so funny?” he spoke softly, an unconscious smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. His left hand brushed slowly along the back of her right, his fingers stroking against her skin and leaving small pinpricks of heat in their wake. She smiled.

“You’re horribly charming sometimes. It’s quite frustrating, really.”

His soft chuckle washed over her, warming her from the inside out as he lowered his head once more. “You’re welcome.”

Sophie huffed, reaching across the corner of the table to smack his shoulder with her left hand. “I don’t know why I find you attractive, sometimes.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’ve heard no complaints thus far.”

She could hear the smile in his voice, the teasing undertone that matched her own. Her eyes were drawn back down to her arm just in time to watch as he finished another almost perfect suture.

His hand curled around hers for a moment, squeezing gently. “Almost done, Soph. Just a couple more.”

“You’re doing a fantastic job, you know,” she smiled down at the top of his head, tapping his foot under the table with her own. “It almost looks like Eliot’s handiwork. Have you been studying the master at his craft?” she joked softly and Nate cleared his throat, shaking his head minutely.

“No, no. Ah - my mother taught me,” he bounced one leg uneasily against her own, a nervous habit he rarely took part in. “My father didn’t put much stock into hospitals when I was a kid. He thought it was just another scam to get people to give up money they did or didn’t have for something you could accomplish at home.”

Sophie pressed her leg against his, stilling the nervous twitch until it was just his foot tapping a quiet, uneven rhythm against the floor. “Go on,” she whispered, catching his eye as he glanced up for a moment.

It was a rare thing, for Nate to talk about his mother. He dropped his gaze back to her arm, inhaling softly. “I used to help my mother cook breakfast on Sunday mornings. It was usually just the two of us, but not always. We made omelets and bacon and she asked about whatever it was I had been doing that week, like it mattered, you know? I was probably six or seven, cutting up the stuff for the omelet at the counter, when a car backfired and you know- loud sound. Knife. I cut my hand pretty bad.”

Nate huffed out a quiet, resentful breath. “I should have gone to the hospital, gotten stitches and a shot and all that stuff, but my father was home and when my mother yelled for him he just came into the kitchen and laughed, told her to stitch it up and I’d be fine. My mother - she did a lot of stitching and knitting, fixing stuff that I’d put holes in without a word. So my father cleaned me up and put me at the table and she stitched me up the best she could, a little sloppy but it did the job.”

“Oh Nate,” Sophie reached out, running her fingers through his hair. Her gentle touch brought a smile back to his face.

“Don’t worry about it, Soph,” he finished the last of his sutures, clipping the thread before leaning back in his seat. “And we’re done.”

She glanced down at her red and irritated arm, grateful that it was still numb and only the tiniest bit sore. He had done a wonderful job, though. “Thank you,” she murmured, tilting her head up when Nate touched her chin, drawing her in for a slow, soft kiss.

The kiss ended slowly, his lips brushing against hers as he spoke, “Tea?”

Sophie laughed, patting his cheek fondly with her right hand. “I prefer my tea with lemon, darling, not a hint of whiskey.”

“I can make tea.” Nate pushed his chair out from the table, pulling away from her as he stood and picked up the mess of medical supplies on the table. “And while I do that, how about you put in one of those movies you like.”

Standing as well, Sophie smiled. Charmed. “Why Mr. Ford, this sounds like it could be a date.”

Nate chuckled. He threw away the trash that had been on the table and picked everything else up to put away in the kitchen. He grabbed the tea kettle next and placed it on the stove. It already had water in it as it almost always did when Sophie was around. “It could be,” he replied as he reached up into the cabinet next to the stove, grabbing the tin that held her favorite tea leaves.

Sophie shuffled through the small stack of movies he kept just for her, picking the last movie that she happened to find. “Pretty woman, then?”

He laughed from the kitchen. A few more drawers opened and closed as he spoke, “Who can resist the charms of Julia Roberts?”

Biting her lip to keep from laughing as well, Sophie grinned. “I was just thinking the same thing.”


End file.
